Trojans have a NU reason to be worried

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 31, 1995

In the time since the Wildcats beat Notre Dame to begin their lingering kiss with God, its list of newly discovered and freshly proud alumni have swelled well into the millions. You can't throw a set of encyclopedias without Volume One hitting some NU alum who has ignored football for 40 years but swears he has been waiting for this day all his life.

Ahh, but USC? You can cut the uncertain tension with a bag of tinsel.

Let it suffice that Gary Barnett and his gaggle of well-tooled Midwestern brainiacs have been playing most of 1995 with the casino's money, and are now rich enough to have nothing but their own personal pride at stake in the Rose Bowl. Not that it isn't a sufficient payout, mind you; it just lacks the deep and abiding angst that awaits John Robinson and USC.

Sure, Northwestern has all the romance - million-year-old alums and fresh-faced undergrads joining together for a jar or two and reminiscing about all the great moments since 1949, like Ara Parseghian taking the job at Notre Dame, or Alex Agase taking the job at Purdue.

And you know what? Good on their fathers. Everybody should get a swing at the big pinata at least once every 10 presidents or so.

But USC? Thirteen Rose Bowls to every one of Northwestern's? Sixteen since the last NU appearance? Heritage Hall? The Heisman Trophy display? O.J. Simpson in his pristine glory? Why, there is potential torture in any misstep.

You see, while the rest of the country has glommed on to Northwestern for all the right reasons (mostly, "Well, why not Northwestern, dammit?" ), USC, like the famed cheese, stands alone. The team everyone roots against anyway has had its audience of ill-wishers expanded to take in the whole nation.

And all but the truest believers in the 'SC contingent, having had to wait longer between Rose Bowls now than at any time since the late '50s and early '60s, don't see the humor in it.

To them, Northwestern isn't Number Three In The Country And Number One In Our Hearts. They are Fresno State grown huge - a team with no tradition but lots of talent that could make the whole year smell like badly smoked fish.

And the USC followers fret about it, because they don't trust their own team. They know this group of seniors has never beaten either Notre Dame or UCLA. That USC was a national championship contender in September and ranked 17th today, behind Virginia Tech and ahead of Clemson. That their team has the following recent bowl pedigree:

Loss to Michigan State at the John Hancock Bowl. Loss to Fresno State at the Freedom Bowl. Win over Utah at the Freedom Bowl. Win over Texas Tech at the Cotton Bowl. The wins were no big deal because they weren't the Rose or helped win a national championship, and the losses got Larry Smith fired.

Oh, and one more thing. They see the 16th consecutive Trojans team that has lost more than the maximum allowable games for USC. Zero. And the 17th consecutive team to be ranked below their true station in life. First.

They frankly are not all that crazy about this Trojans team because of those losses to Notre Dame and UCLA, and not at all jazzed about the return of John Robinson because he isn't the old John Robinson. They remain defiantly nostalgic about the good old days, when they had first call on every good player in Southern California, every good tailback in the universe and were the best program in the nation for the best part of 15 seasons.

This newfangled Trojan thing, where you go five years without a Rose Bowl and 16 without a Top 5 ranking - this isn't what the USC folk signed on for at all.

And they seem vaguely confused by Northwestern's wave of adoptive followers. They know about the team; the team is really quite good. But this sudden nationwide love affair with all things Evanston has put 'SC in the position of being what boxing people like to call The Opponent - the necessary body required to make a match, rather than the envy of the football-speaking world.

All you've seen, heard or read these last three weeks is a self-congratulatory paean to Northwestern graduates and their first experience with actual football front-running in more than two generations. Even people who have no connection at all to Northwestern are signed on for Monday.

USC? Only for the diehards. Only for the folks who watched the Trojans lose to Fresno State at the Freedom three years ago, or know that they have won only four of their last 11 bowl games and love them anyway. In a game that traditionally has the ratings game beat, the nation will be looking only at one team.